US Drones Strike ISIS Targets BBC Reports; Pentagon Denies

Moments ago, in what would be a clear escalation in the Iraq war, and confirmation that the US has finally gone "kinetic" as it warned on several occasions in the past it would, Iraq state-sponsored Iraqiya TV reported that US drones had struck ISIS targets near the Iraq-Syria border attack without giving details or saying how it obtained the information.

U.S. planes bombed targets in the drone region based on the Iraqi-Syrian border, according to sources close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced last week that Washington will be "specific strikes" of the armed militants, who control some Iraqi cities, if "this is required

On the other hand, there were conflicting reports from Iraq on the end of the battle for control of a major oil refinery in Baiji, Iraq, amid reports unconfirmed reports that Sunni insurgents have controlled it in the end.

An official in northern Iraq told the BBC that 160 soldiers defending the Baiji refinery and agreed to lay down their arms and leave their positions after mediation by tribal leaders in the region.

But an officer in the Iraqi army, located inside the refinery opposed these reports and said that the militants did not dominate, but the towers near the fence.

The Iraqi military spokesman has said - earlier - that the rebels were forced to leave the place. The refinery has been under siege ten days, with rebels repel attack more than once.

He says BBC correspondent in northern Iraq, said the control of the Baiji refinery is necessary that the rebels wanted to maintain control of the areas where they entered, and provide energy for the connector.

From the Pentagon's Press Secretary John Kirby:

No truth to rumors in media today that US drones struck ISIL targets in Iraq.

What's it going to take to get you into a new drone today? Did I mention we have low, low financing for recent graduates of jihadist school? If you finance an even dozen drones, we'll throw in a free beach towel for you and five friends.

Yes he did talk about air strikes actually. Kerry said today that US air strikes would be irresponsible. This is what happens when you vote the 3 stooges into office. Moe talks peace while Curly is stuffing somebody's foot with fireworks.

I don't understand why the rest of the world can't develop and use an effective detection and missile system to shoot down drones on regular basis. After all, this cannot be so difficult, they move relatively slowly.

Such a device should be a basic and standard equipment in the military munition of other armies.

No debt, it would seem so, at least that would be the effory. They better act fast because the rebels are in disarray in Syria. On the weekend they had a couple of thousand savages storm in from the Golan and they got their asses kicked and retreatedunder israeli air cover. Figure that one out.

PPP ('public private partnership) mercs take over 'regular' army role in 'Embassy defence' post-Surge, pre-departure (one of Obama's key re-election platforms). How is this different to the other 'warlords'/factions/fictions (current and historical) imposing their will/snatching the resources they want, irrespective of the murder, mayhem, destruction and human 'collateral damage'? NeoCon=neoprefeudalwarlordism. Goodbye enlightenment, thanks for trying...

IRAN drones...... you know the one we flew to them so they could reverse engineer and make clones... according to shit for brains bendover barry we have mutual interests now... wonder how the house of saud feels bout that.... ah couple of barry bows and all is forgiven

muslim on muslim ...... lots of blood and gore soaked into the sand ..... keep it up and lets send bigger weapons to both sides and pcp and crack too. the "brave jihadis" were as high as a kite on that shit in iraq.... a little chemical courage ... now go blow your islamic ass up...

The 4th of July is coming up and the vast majority of Americans have absolutely NO CLUE that they live in the Nazi 4th Reich. And, those mindless ones in the military who they thank for 'fighting for our freedom', - are the greatest threat to all life on the planet ever created by mankind.

I'm sure it wasn't any off those clearly identifiable ISIS US Humvees that are on loan by the US government they couldn't target when they first marched in that would be clear targets without collateral damage and couldn't identify as clear targets afterwardsonce in places like Mosul knocking over Central Banks.

I fail to see how ISIS is "terrorists", more like revolutionaries. It's a relatively small group which, if it did not have the support it does, would have been wiped out quickly. They are busy setting up social services, rebuilding and administrating their territory and restoring peace while advancing on the enemy. Honestly, the US needs to just stay out of this entirely. If the US gets involved and hits ISIS, then ISIS will direct their forces on the US, as the US becomes the enabler to their enemies. If the US gets involved and fails, that's the end of US "legitimacy" or whatever's left of it at this point. What needs to happen will happen. Let it happen and then open diplomatic channels and seek a peace.

I agree they are more revolutionaries than terrorists. Many, many Sunni Iraqis prefer the secular life they had for so many years under Saddam. They are pretty much terrified and caught between these Sunni Islamists and the corrupt murderous Shiite regime in Baghdad. Not a good place to be. Have to go along with whoever is in charge at the moment. Eventually there will be conflict between the Islamists and the more secular-leaning Sunni tribes.

Yesterday I watched that hour-long ISIS video. They are brutal, very publicly kill their enemies armed or not, then go into mosques and "forgive" those who repent (Sunnis, of course) before them. These tactics are very reminiscent of Communist revolutionary movements from Lenin to Mao to PolPot. Spread the terror then, after re-education or self-cleansing, the rest of the masses are "forgiven" and made docile.

Truly fascinating.

One thing is for certain -- there is no return to the previous Iraq whether the current figurehead Maliki is removed or not.

Yep, glad to see you watched their video. Yes, it's propaganda, but so is all media. Being able to identify it as such and watch objectively is something the media does NOT want you to do. Here's the simple fact... under a caliphate system, islam works out pretty ok. In fact, it worked out pretty ok for over a thousand years. That was ripped from them, they were hacked randomly into various "countries" and put at each others throats for imperialism. This is the end result. The message from them has been very clear, they want to be left alone, they want to preserve their own values without outside interference. The secular-leaning tribes can still be rather secular under the system, they just want their culture back.

See how the media claims they are randomly breaking into civilian homes and killing people? Not really, they have a target list. Randomly shooting at vehicles? No, they did their homework and are hitting legit targets. If they were indiscriminately killing civilians, then the civilians would not be backing them. It's clear that they have local support, as they may not be the desired outcome, but they are the best option on the table at the moment given the alternatives.

I'm a freedom fighter, you're a rebel but they're terrorists, but ask "them" and it's the other way round.

in ukraine if the easterners were "our guys" they would be freedom fighters but since they're not then they're terrorists and there's little media mention of the army shelling towns:-(

it's just slightly more difficult when "they're" elected but hey-ho let's gloss over that, with enough stories about what a bad guy he is we can force him out and the sheeple think we have the moral high ground. Now back to bread and circuses.

I suppose we'll see whether ISIS is controlling by fear or with the support of the Sunni tribes. For the moment, all the Sunnis want to rid themselves of the Shia domination. Yes, they definitely had "hit lists", but looking at those faces in the mosques, I also saw fear and not enthusiasm. Sorry, but it looked like Mao re-education camps to me. "Come along or die". Hard to say with certainty what exactly is going on though I certainly agree they couldn't be holding onto territory without some public support.

How much of ISIS is Iraqi and how much is internatinalist? There was a segment of "volunteers" from Qatar tearing up their passports. No way will the Sunni tribes have allegiance to a foreign dominated "caliphate", no matter how phony those borders are. In fact, the border issue is more related to lumping Kurds, Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis together rather than the separation of Syrians from Iraqis.

Basically I just envision more chaos, which I believe was the goal of Obama/Nato/Saudi all along. I suppose Israel could benefit too, but having a dozen indpendent Islamist movements around your borders isn't exactly more controllable than perhaps buying off some new leader in Damascus or Amman.

Phew, who passed a EMP load? Shit is falling from the sky. All joking aside, we we're very venerable to our superior military technology. I have screamed from the top of my lungs. These fucking things will drop like a lead balloon without mechanical backup services. The engineers just laughed.

Is this "BBC" story in Arabic or is it in English? Even the headline makes no sense, because if it's news that drones are being used there, how can they assume everyone knows what this "drone region" is?

------------------------------------------------

U.S. planes bombed targets in the drone region based on the Iraqi-Syrian border, according to sources close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced last week that Washington will be "specific strikes" of the armed militants, who control some Iraqi cities, if "this is required

On the other hand, there were conflicting reports from Iraq on the end of the battle for control of a major oil refinery in Baiji, Iraq, amid reports unconfirmed reports that Sunni insurgents have controlled it in the end.

An official in northern Iraq told the BBC that 160 soldiers defending the Baiji refinery and agreed to lay down their arms and leave their positions after mediation by tribal leaders in the region.

But an officer in the Iraqi army, located inside the refinery opposed these reports and said that the militants did not dominate, but the towers near the fence.

The Iraqi military spokesman has said - earlier - that the rebels were forced to leave the place. The refinery has been under siege ten days, with rebels repel attack more than once.

He says BBC correspondent in northern Iraq, said the control of the Baiji refinery is necessary that the rebels wanted to maintain control of the areas where they entered, and provide energy for the connector.

Obviously Bush's fault - a bunch of those missiles he shot at Saddam Hussein must have missed and gone straight up into the higher levels of the atmosphere. Now they are finally falling back to earth after years of near earth orbit - and right onto ISIS positions.

I am pretty sure (as of today) the whole Iraq/isis thing is a feint and we all fell for it.

The real plan was to arm isis to fight in Syria and there wasn't a good legal way obama could give missiles, ammo and hummers to terrorists so they just told them where to find them and got out of the way.

There is no way that US drones could have missed truckloads os humvees being shipped out. A missile into each semi would have been all it took. No, the plan here was to get as much weaponry as possible to isis without a paper trail.

The rest of the fighting is just crazy muslims doing what they do to make it look good.